Nine Million Voters Removed as West Bengal Heads Toward April Elections

Millions Face an Election Without Their Names on the Rolls

About nine million voters, roughly 12% of West Bengal's electorate of 76 million, have been removed from the electoral rolls ahead of assembly elections on April 23 and 29, 2026. Around 2.7 million people caught in disputed deletions face an urgent problem: the elections can proceed while their appeals remain unresolved and the voter lists are frozen.

Muhammad Daud Ali, 65, is among them. An army technician who sustained combat injuries during the Kargil War, he holds a passport, pension records and military service documents. After the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision, known as SIR, he discovered that his name and those of his three children had disappeared from the voter list. Only his wife remained registered.

Ali described his distress and uncertainty about where to seek help:

I am dumbstruck. I feel deeply hurt and insulted. How can they conduct the elections without solving our disputes? I simply have no idea who to seek justice from,

More than six million names were removed in categories covering absentee or deceased voters and other administrative corrections. Another 2.7 million were excluded through a disputed verification and adjudication process. For families seeking restoration, a decision delivered after the voting deadline may come too late to let them participate.

The Election Commission says the revision is intended to remove duplicate or outdated entries and add genuine voters. Thirteen states and federally administered territories have undergone SIR, but West Bengal is the only one where the exercise was followed by an additional layer of special adjudication. Its scale and timing have produced legal challenges, a political confrontation and a crisis of confidence in the institutions conducting the election.

How the Revision Reduced the Electorate

West Bengal's revision is its most extensive electoral roll cleanup since 2002. Unlike regular revisions, SIR involves verification from house to house, stricter checks of documents and artificial intelligence used to identify what officials call "logical discrepancies." In simple terms, the system looks for information that appears inconsistent across records.

The exercise began with 7.66 crore registered voters in November 2025, or 76.6 million. By February 2026, the draft rolls contained approximately 7.04 crore entries, or 70.4 million. That represents a reduction of about 6.2 million entries before the later disputed exclusions brought the total number removed to approximately nine million.

The removals fall into three broad categories:

• Routine corrections involving duplicate entries, deceased voters and people who had moved without updating their registration.
• Absentee voters whom Booth Level Officers, the officials responsible for local verification, could not locate.
• A disputed group of 2.7 million voters flagged for logical discrepancies through an algorithm comparing current information with the 2002 rolls, widely regarded as the last clean baseline.

The artificial intelligence system flagged spelling differences in names across decades, more than six voters connected to one ancestor, parent and child age gaps outside a range of 15 to 45 years, gaps of less than 40 years between grandparents and voters, and inconsistencies between names and recorded gender.

Ali submitted enumeration forms connecting his family to the 2002 records and supplied substantial documentation. Nevertheless, his family members were classified as doubtful cases. Many voters were excluded even after hearings intended to verify their information again.

The sequence has left voters navigating several stages, from initial checking to judicial scrutiny and appeals:

• November 2025: The exercise began with 76.6 million registered voters.
• February 2026: The draft rolls contained approximately 70.4 million entries.
• March 28: Former Air Force officer Md Shamim Akhtar found his name deleted in a second list.
• April 13: The Supreme Court scheduled a hearing on whether voters cleared after the rolls were frozen could still vote.
• April 23 and 29: West Bengal's assembly polling is scheduled to take place.

Veterans and Older Voters Seek Answers

Suprabuddha Sen, an engineer aged 88, worked for 32 years at Damodar Valley Corporation and is the maternal grandson of artist Nandalal Bose. His name was deleted despite his submission of matriculation certificates, passports, employment records and pension documents.

Sen expressed resignation about losing his vote but demanded an explanation from those responsible:

I don't care anymore about being disenfranchised,

Those who deleted my name should be able to answer why I am not in the list.

Wing Commander Md Shamim Akhtar, a decorated Indian Air Force officer, served for 17 years and once held a diplomatic passport. His name moved from the final list to "under adjudication" status and then to deletion. Adjudication means that an authority must examine a disputed case and decide whether the person qualifies for inclusion.

Akhtar said his attempts to get guidance from his Booth Level Officer initially brought assurances rather than a clear procedure:

I contacted my BLO, Mondal, but he did not tell me any procedure to follow and assured me that it would be restored automatically. Then on March 28, when my name was deleted in the second list, the BLO told me to hire a lawyer and approach the tribunal,

Some families have found deceased relatives still listed while living members were removed. State minister Ghulam Rabbani, who has contested four elections and voted regularly for decades, discovered that his name was under adjudication. Cabinet minister Shashi Panja was also flagged, although members of her family remained eligible.

West Bengal Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty also faced scrutiny. So did Richa Ghosh, 22, a member of India's squad that won the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup, while she was competing abroad. The cases span military service, public administration, sport and ordinary family life, showing how widely the verification disputes have reached.

What Losing a Vote Means to Families

Hasnara Khatun, 35, lives in Harishchandrapur, a constituency in Malda district along the Bangladesh border. Her father, grandfather and great grandfather had been voters. Now five of the seven people in her family have had their voting rights suspended.

Khatun described her anger at the removal:

I am very angry,

She also expressed fear about what the exclusion might mean for her family:

We have been effectively turned into non-citizens. Who knows what comes next?

The system can't be trusted anymore.

For families such as hers, the voter list is connected to a sense of belonging and recognition. Losing a place on it has created anxiety about their standing in the country as well as their ability to choose a government.

Mukulika Banerjee, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, has described how deeply voting matters to marginalised communities. A voter in West Bengal's Sundarbans explained that feeling to her:

If we don't vote, no-one will even bother to remember that poor people exist.

Banerjee said voting gives people a meaningful way to make their voices count:

By denying them their right to vote, one takes away one of their fundamental rights, and one that is hugely meaningful to them and allows them to assert their voice,

Ali's military records, Sen's employment history and Khatun's family voting history capture different sides of the same immediate problem. People who expected to participate are trying to obtain a decision before the election, while the institutions handling their cases face millions of disputes.

Muslim Voters and Hindu Communities Both Affected

Constituency data compiled by political parties suggests that Muslims account for around 65% of the 2.7 million people caught in disputed exclusions. Across all nine million removals, approximately 3.11 million, or about 34%, are Muslims. Their share of West Bengal's population was 27% in the 2011 census, making their reported share of deletions about seven percentage points higher.

Muslim communities have faced a particularly heavy burden in Murshidabad and Malda. The removals have also affected Hindu Dalits from the Matua refugee community, migrants who speak Hindi in urban areas and people holding prominent public positions.

In North 24-Parganas and Nadia, large numbers of Matua voters were deleted. The Matuas are a Scheduled Caste community whose members migrated from the territory that is now Bangladesh. They have substantial political influence across several dozen assembly seats.

Constituencies including Bagda and Bongaon Uttar recorded large removals among Hindu Matua voters. The community largely supported the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2021, helping the party increase its assembly representation from three seats to 77. Their exclusion now puts pressure on a group central to the BJP's growth in the state.

Kolkata presents another pattern. Nearly 29.6% of voters were removed in the north of the city and 27.5% in the south. Hindus accounted for 80% of those deleted, many of them from communities speaking Hindi with roots in northern India.

The figures show that the burden varies sharply by location and community. Muslims account for a disproportionate share of disputed cases, while Hindu communities, including some that have supported the BJP, have also lost large numbers of registered voters.

Where the Losses Could Matter Most

Districts along the Bangladesh border, including North 24-Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, Malda, Uttar Dinajpur and Cooch Behar, recorded heavy losses. North 24-Parganas alone lost 1.26 million voters, representing 15% of its electorate.

Murshidabad, India's district with the largest Muslim population, had 749,000 names removed, roughly 13% of its voters. Paschim Bardhaman experienced the second highest proportional decline statewide, with its electorate shrinking by 16.9%.

Nandigram illustrates why the location of deletions matters. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee lost there to the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari by just 1,956 votes in 2021. Up to 95.5% of the voters deleted there are reportedly Muslims, although the community accounts for only 25% of the local electorate.

In Bhabanipur, Banerjee's own constituency, 51.8% of Muslim voters were placed under adjudication. Muslims make up 21.9% of the constituency's population. Tens of thousands of voters were struck off its rolls.

West Bengal's elections can turn on a few thousand votes in individual constituencies. A large reduction in eligible voters at particular polling booths changes the electorate that parties must reach, especially in urban seats and constituencies around towns.

The local concentrations have sharpened allegations of political targeting. They also explain why a statewide total alone cannot describe the electoral stakes: the number and composition of voters removed from closely contested seats can be especially consequential.

Banerjee and the BJP Clash Over the Exercise

Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress, known as TMC, accuse the Election Commission of working alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP to exclude opposition voters, particularly Muslims. Banerjee has announced plans for protests and another approach to the Supreme Court.

The chief minister challenged the decision to proceed while millions of cases remained unresolved:

How can the elections start without solving the cases of 2.7 million voters?

The BJP describes the revision as necessary national housekeeping. Federal minister Sukanta Majumdar argues that the Constitution permits only Indian citizens to choose the country's leaders.

Majumdar defended the removals in those terms:

Therefore, purging non-citizens was important,

He blamed the state government for slowing the process by taking the dispute to the Supreme Court. Modi has suggested in campaign speeches that the cleanup targets illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators. The TMC says that language is used as a coded reference to Muslims.

The confrontation also reached the Election Commission's headquarters in Delhi. A TMC delegation met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for seven minutes. Delegation member Derek O'Brien alleged that Kumar refused to answer questions and insulted the group by telling its members to "get lost."

The Election Commission strongly rejected that allegation. It said TMC leaders had raised their voices and created a disruptive atmosphere. The conflicting descriptions of the meeting show the breakdown in trust between the election authority and the party governing West Bengal.

The political battle now runs alongside the appeals process. The TMC is demanding restoration and accountability, while the BJP is defending tighter scrutiny of eligibility. Voters awaiting decisions must navigate those disputes with polling dates close at hand.

Courts and Tribunals Face Millions of Cases

The Supreme Court has allowed the April elections to proceed without every deletion dispute being settled. The electoral rolls have effectively been frozen while 2.7 million disputed cases remain unresolved. A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi described a "trust deficit" between the Election Commission and the elected state government.

The court ordered an extraordinary intervention involving approximately 700 judicial officers from West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. They took over roles involving examination and decisions on disputed entries from Electoral Registration Officers.

Nineteen special tribunals, headed by former High Court chief justices and judges, were established to hear appeals. These tribunals are intended to review challenged decisions and determine whether names should be restored.

The disputed deletion group numbers about 2.7 million, while senior advocate D.S. Naidu, representing the Election Commission, told the Supreme Court that 30 to 34 lakh appeals, or three million to 3.4 million, were pending. Each tribunal was handling more than one lakh cases, equivalent to more than 100,000.

Justice Bagchi described the personal meaning of participation in an election:

The right to vote in a country you were born in is not just constitutional, but sentimental. It is about being part of a democracy and helping elect a government,

The bench maintained that judicial intervention is intended to promote elections rather than stop them. Its position was that an election cannot be halted unless an enormous number of voters are excluded to the extent that the exclusions materially affect the result.

By April 14, only two names among the 2.7 million deleted following adjudication had been restored, both after specific Supreme Court intervention. They were Mahatab Shaikh, the Congress candidate for Farakka, and former MLA Mottakin Alam, now the Congress candidate for Manikchak.

The tribunals remained largely non-operational despite preparatory work at locations including the Syama Prasad Mookerjee National Institute of Water and Sanitation. For millions of other voters, the existence of an appeal mechanism had yet to translate into timely restoration.

The Supreme Court scheduled an April 13 hearing to consider whether voters cleared by tribunals after the rolls were frozen could still cast ballots. As of this article's April 14 account, the outcome of that scheduled hearing is not given. The immediate issue is whether a successful appeal after the deadline can secure a vote in the April 23 and 29 election, rather than leaving a voter waiting years for the next opportunity.

Deletions Reshape the Electoral Arithmetic

In several districts, the number of removed voters exceeds the margins recorded in the 2021 assembly elections. Hooghly had 8.68 lakh deletions, or 868,000, against a TMC winning margin of 2.79 lakh votes, or 279,000. The deletions were more than three times that margin.

Purba Bardhaman recorded 8.35 lakh removals, or 835,000, compared with a margin of 2.75 lakh votes, or 275,000. In Paschim Bardhaman, 3.14 lakh voters, or 314,000, were removed against a vote difference of 43,893. That is more than seven times the earlier difference.

Parties now have to adjust to a smaller electorate. Their work involves persuading those still registered and ensuring that supporters reach polling stations. In constituencies decided by narrow margins, changes affecting even a few thousand voters at particular booths can alter the competition.

Political scientist Sibaji Pratim Basu described the holding of an election with unresolved voting rights as unprecedented in India:

There is no example of an election happening in India with voters' rights remaining suspended,

This is a shame for democracy.

The Election Commission's stated objective is a reliable roll that removes outdated or duplicate entries while including genuine voters. The scale, method and timing of the West Bengal exercise have instead generated fear among many people trying to retain their place on that roll.

Military veterans, ministers, an athlete and families with generations of voting history have all faced scrutiny or deletion. Their experiences have spread concern through communities already sceptical of state power, turning disputes over records into a wider loss of confidence.

West Bengal is a major prize in national politics and has the fourth highest number of parliamentary seats. With the April polls approaching, timely tribunal decisions, the treatment of successful appeals after the freeze and the Election Commission's ability to rebuild trust are central to both voter participation and confidence in India's democratic institutions.

Key Points

• Approximately nine million voters, about 12% of West Bengal's electorate, were removed before assembly polling on April 23 and 29, 2026.
• About 2.7 million disputed exclusions remained unresolved while the electoral rolls were frozen.
• The revision used document checks and artificial intelligence to compare current information with the 2002 rolls.
• Political party data puts Muslims at about 34% of all deletions and 65% of disputed cases; Hindu Matua communities and urban migrants were also heavily affected.
• Border districts recorded large losses, while Kolkata and Paschim Bardhaman also experienced substantial reductions.
• Approximately 700 judicial officers and 19 tribunals were assigned to the dispute process; the Election Commission's lawyer cited three million to 3.4 million pending appeals.
• Only Mahatab Shaikh and Mottakin Alam had regained their places among the 2.7 million deleted following adjudication, after Supreme Court intervention.
• The TMC alleges political targeting; the BJP defends the exercise as a necessary eligibility cleanup.
• The Supreme Court allowed polling to proceed and scheduled an April 13 hearing on voting rights for people cleared after the rolls were frozen.